Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Glaucoma patient faces surgery due to state's failure to implement its medical marijuana law

Susan Sturner is a card-carrying patient in the Medicinal
Marijuana Program in New Jersey. She is
very angry. She has paid the required
fees and jumped through all the hoops the Department of Health has established in
order to register in the program. But
she still can’t get her medicine.

Greenleaf Alternative Treatment Center in Montclair, NJ has
been, so far, the only medical marijuana dispensary to get a final permit from the state. But Greenleaf
has yet to open its doors to patients. Susan
called around. She said the Department
of Health points to Greenleaf as responsible for the delay; Greenleaf points to
the Department of Health.

Meanwhile, Susan still can’t get her medicine.

Susan is a glaucoma patient and she faces blindness. The pressure in her eyes--her intraocular
pressure--is dangerously high. Her
ophthalmologist has recommended a major surgical procedure--putting tubes in
her eyes--to control this pressure. Any surgical procedure entails significant risk. A far less risky option—and far less costly--is
marijuana therapy. Marijuana has been
shown to reduce intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients who, like Susan, do
not respond to traditional pharmaceutical treatment.

In fact, the New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana
law specifically allows glaucoma patients to qualify for marijuana
therapy. But Susan still can’t get her
medicine, despite the fact that this law passed nearly three years ago.

Susan is ready and willing to sue Governor Christie and anyone
else in state government who is preventing her from obtaining medicine to which
she is legally entitled. In fact, her ID
card is over a month old, which means she has been paying the state for a month
for nothing.

Susan came to the November meeting of the Coalition for
Medical Marijuana—New Jersey, which was held as usual at the Lawrence Township
Library in Mercer County.

She discussed going out-of-state. Sure, she could travel to Rhode Island and
use her New Jersey ID card to legally purchase medical marijuana there. But if she brings the marijuana back to her
New Jersey home, she faces arrest, imprisonment, and a host of civil
penalties.

Susan said that we should send a sympathy card to the
governor from all the people who have died during the failure of the Christie
administration to implement this law. We
discussed her idea at the meeting but decided that it would be impossible for
two reasons: first, we could never figure out all their names, and second,
because the list of cards would be in the tens of thousands and we could not
afford to send that many cards.

Tens of thousands of New Jersey hospice patients die every
year who have not gotten the medical marijuana they are entitled to by
law. Add to these the cancer patients,
the patients with AIDS, the seizure patients, the patients with neurological
conditions and the patients with abdominal conditions, and the number of
patients who die suffering needlessly every year is staggering.

And remember, New Jersey’s list of medical conditions that
qualify for marijuana therapy is the most restrictive in the nation. If the full range of marijuana’s therapeutic
potential were recognized and permitted, hundreds of thousands of patients here
could be helped in a safe and cost-effective way. As it is, hundreds of thousands of New Jersey
patients, like Susan Sturner, continue to be harmed every day by the state’s
failure to fully implement this law.

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About The Coalition

Coalition members hold diverse opinions, but we all agree:

Arresting patients is wrong, and it must stop now.

Modern clinical research, centuries of experience and the impassioned personal accounts of thousands of real patients concur: Marijuana can alleviate symptoms of certain serious medical conditions, and it can do so when other drugs fail to help.

Doctors should be free to recommend this medicine to promote health, and sick or injured New Jerseyans should be free to use it responsibly.

The safety margin for therapeutic marijuana is as wide as it can be ─there is no known lethal dose.

New Jersey healthcare professionals dispense potentially lethal drugs every day. We trust them to do so very carefully, and solely to benefit their patients. Common sense and compassion demand that doctors should control non-lethal marijuana medicine for those who truly need it. To make this important change a reality, your voice is needed.

The New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act was introduced in the State Senate in January 2005 by Senator Nicholas Scutari (D-Linden). A companion bill is pending in the Assembly, sponsored by Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Princeton) and Assemblyman Michael Carroll (R-Morris Township).